Choose the Right Domain for Your Online Business (Part 1)

choosing the right domain name for your business

Domain names have a huge impact on online businesses as it influences a brand’s visibility. While there are many domain options in the market nowadays, you need to be careful and comply with the best practices.

Here are five factors that we recommend you consider when selecting a domain for your business in Singapore.

Look for Ideal Keywords

Before heading to your preferred domain registrar, take some time to look for keywords that resonate with your brand and niche. Ideally, these keywords should easily define what your company or business does or intends to do. Do not shy away from mixing and mashing the keywords together to see what makes sense but do not force the process. Use suffixes and prefixes to make the domain unique and attention-grabbing.

The Domain Should be Unique

The domain that you select will be part of your brand. Therefore, you need to make sure that it is unique and stands out from the crowd. Settling for a domain that is similar to other existing and popular brands is not a good idea, as it always leads to confusion and sometimes even legal tussles.

The goal is not to be too unique. Misspelling a common word or a keyword can result in mediocre results. Flickr.com is a good example of a miss spelled word that resulted in the company losing a significant amount of traffic to their competitor. In the end, the company had to purchase a new domain with the correct spelling of the target keyword flicker.com.

Choose .Com

If you want to establish a long-term brand online, renowned Singapore digital marketers recommend using .com. Note that using a 301 redirect to channel traffic to a .org or .net is OK, but having .com or TLD of your target audience country is paramount.

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Even though there are hundreds of TLDs options in the market, .com still stands tall as the most trusted and popular on the World Web. Note that most internet users do not know that there are TLDs options and so they may hesitate to click on one when it is displayed on SERPs.

Domain should be Easy to Type

Your main objective as you go through this process is to choose a domain that the target audience will be able to use efficiently. Therefore, if the URL is complicated and difficult to type, people will not bother to visit your site.

Avoid words that may be difficult for the target customers to spell. You may be able to include high-value keywords in a lengthy URL string; but if doing so affects user experience negatively, your brand will suffer.

Should Be Easy to Remember

Word-of-Mouth is one of the most powerful marketing strategies that can boost the popularity of your brand. Make the domain easy to remember to increase the chances of the current customers sharing it with their friends and colleagues. Otherwise, spending thousands of dollars on a website will not yield any significant results if the target customers cannot remember the domain name.

Consider each of these factors extensively before settling on a particular domain. Remember that the domain will be an important part of your brand once the site goes live.

About the Author

Tom Koh

Tom is the CEO and Principal Consultant of MediaOne, a leading digital marketing agency. He has consulted for MNCs like Canon, Maybank, Capitaland, SingTel, ST Engineering, WWF, Cambridge University, as well as Government organisations like Enterprise Singapore, Ministry of Law, National Galleries, NTUC, e2i, SingHealth. His articles are published and referenced in CNA, Straits Times, MoneyFM, Financial Times, Yahoo! Finance, Hubspot, Zendesk, CIO Advisor.

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